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sapo
March 13th, 2006, 12:26 AM
Hi guys, as you may know i m brazillian and i use ubuntu since warty, so i have already installed it for a lot of people and i m always helping them out.

And people here that i help, always say to me "You should write a book", cause i m not a linux pro, but i can think as a newbie and make newbies understand what they are doing, instead of saying: "type this, this and this, but dont ask me why".

I really try to teach people just ONCE, so they will bother me once for each problem and not run at me everytime with the same stuff :evil:

I started at computer science this year and already gave up (that was worthless), so i have some free time to kill.

So i started thinking about what people say to me, and today i was asking one friend that always said that i should do it, and he said:


Vc sabe explicar e tals, sempre que te perguntei algo tu sabia, ou sabia aonde procurar.

Translating this would be something like:

"You know how to explain things, when i asked you something, you always knew how to do, or where to look."

So, i think that the important thing is not to know how to do, but to know where to look, and it gave me another idea.

The main problem about writing a linux book, especially a distro-based book like the one i have in mind, is that before you finish writing the book, half of the things you have writen has changed, so i think that i could write something to "open minds" and teach people how things work, teach them where to look, and how to solve the problems, instead of giving them the solution.

Cause the problem i see in many books is that some books thinks that the reader is dumb, and other books thinks that all readers are genius, its kinda hard to write something that a genius isnt going to find dumb, and i dumb person isnt going to find too hard, cause the truth is, there is no spoon!

Before you say that this can be found on the internet, i should say that the main goal is to write the book in portuguese, and after that translate it to english if its worth, cause english documentation is easy to find, but brazilian people who doesnt know english, find themselves with a few, or no documentation at all.

Oh, and i m planning to make it free to download, or if some company accept making printed copies i would sell it for those who want to have it in paper or just buy cause they liked and wanna help out.

But the purpose of this topic is for you guys to give me some ideas, so i can start making some project scratch, and see if its worth or not.

The ideas i already have in mind is to make 2 kind of things, one thing is to write this "mind opener" part, where i m gonna try to teach people how linux works, how ubuntu works, and how everything works. And the other part would be like a cookbook of common problems, faqs, and things that help people tune their Ubuntu install, we have plenty documentation out there as reference, it just have to be organized.

So.. could you guys help me out with this?

thanx in advance :mrgreen:

aysiu
March 13th, 2006, 03:04 AM
Go for it!

I don't know if it's ever worth making into a book, though, for the main reason you mentioned. Every Linux book I've ever read is obsolete the moment it's printed.

Do an online website or make downloadable PDF.

MetalMusicAddict
March 13th, 2006, 03:11 AM
This is not in any way ment to stop you from writing a book. HERE (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/ref=pd_kk_sr_2/102-1313718-0765709?index=stripbooks&field-keywords=ubuntu%20linux) is a Amazon search that shows 4 books comming out this year. I wanted to post these because people interested in books will see them.

sapo
March 13th, 2006, 03:14 AM
This is not in any way ment to stop you from writing a book. HERE (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/ref=pd_kk_sr_2/102-1313718-0765709?index=stripbooks&field-keywords=ubuntu%20linux) is a Amazon search that shows 4 books comming out this year. I wanted to post these because people interested in books will see them.
Nice, but we havent any in portuguese, but the obsolete part is what scares me, i was thinking in how can i write something that at least take some time to become obsolete, and its hard to find out how to do it :(

John.Michael.Kane
March 13th, 2006, 03:17 AM
sapo you do one that is pdf or some other open document format based, and is updated by you with each release or is updated with every new tip or trick writen in portuguese, and hosted on your server for download or something like that.